Speccy's most popular countries?

2»

Comments

  • edited March 2008
    LOL... sorry, my first computer was a coco and I got carried away.
  • edited March 2008
    If the CoCo is the same machine type as the Dragon 32 then Jmk did a rather spiffing Gauntlet game last year with graphics by Sadako. Plays really well and nice speed too :)
  • edited March 2008
    CKay wrote: »
    If the CoCo is the same machine type as the Dragon 32 then Jmk did a rather spiffing Gauntlet game last year with graphics by Sadako. Plays really well and nice speed too :)

    What's it called? Linkie please?
  • edited March 2008
    CoCo... that reminds me of a club membership that I cancelled two weeks ago, one that I never asked to join! I've never heard of that computer before. I tried to contact the (last?) Sinclair users group in North America, and the reply was that the last remaining members went to the CoCo group. I had no idea CoCo was a computer ('CoCo' can be translated as 'sh*t' in Portuguese, btw). I received one or two newsletters by mail, but after seeing that it had nothing to do with Sinclair computers, I asked to be removed from the list.

    I'm sad to say that in this country, when asking older people what computers they remember from the 80s, most remember the C64 and Apple, some remember the TRS-80 and Atari, and a very little tiny microscopical minority heard about Sinclair or Timex computers. It's really sad.

    One day I'll start a thread comparing the activity of Sinclair users in the U.S. and in Europe. I understand why it didn't work over here, but it's also interesting to see how interests, enthusiasm and participation differ. The impact of the Spectrum in Europe was stronger than what most people think. Outside Europe it's a different story. Clones and stuff, but not the love, the following, the cult. This is hard to explain.
  • edited March 2008
    JamesD wrote: »
    NTSC color artifacting in the 256x192 mode helped a lot but that doesn't show up on PAL.

    Hmm... I wonder if the Spectrum loses its attribute clash on NTSC? ;)
  • edited April 2008
    snigfarp wrote: »
    Hmm... I wonder if the Spectrum loses its attribute clash on NTSC? ;)
    LOL... well if you own a 2068 and use the newer graphics mode it's not as bad. Does that count? :D

    If the Speccy had been introduced in the US instead of the TS1000 people would have probably overlooked the defective units and Timex might have stayed in the market. It still wasn't completely what the American market accepted but it was a lot closer. Real keyboards were king in the US.
    The 2068 was a good computer but Timex had already blown their chance.

    There is a small following in the US, try the 2068 group on yahoo.
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ts2068/
  • edited April 2008
    JamesD wrote: »
    Real keyboards were king in the US.

    Apart from the CoCo, of course (ironically its UK clone the Dragon 32 had a proper keyboard). I've just noticed the year the original CoCo was released (1980), which explains the quality of the graphics. I wonder why they never upgraded them in the 1983 CoCo2?
  • edited April 2008
    snigfarp wrote: »
    Apart from the CoCo, of course (ironically its UK clone the Dragon 32 had a proper keyboard). I've just noticed the year the original CoCo was released (1980), which explains the quality of the graphics. I wonder why they never upgraded them in the 1983 CoCo2?
    You and all the CoCo fans wonder the same thing.

    The CoCo2 was a cost saving design right when the price war was underway and the MC-10 was an even cheaper design aimed at the TS1000 and other cheap machines. There was a more advanced design with a real serial port, real keyboard (almost identical to the CoCo3 keyboard), it used the full 64K from BASIC (RAM Drive?) and it had some other enhancements but someone at Tandy axed it. I don't know if it had improved graphics though. They should have given ALL the 64K machines the RAM drive.

    Tandy had the opportunity to draw on the popularity of the machine and start shifting the user base to more advanced users but someone at Tandy was determined to keep it the cheap machine.

    They did the same thing with the CoCo3 by leaving out the sound chip. They also canceled the network card and some other professional add ons that were designed for the CoCo3 with OS-9.

    Tandy was probably the only retailer that could have challenged the Apple II and C64 in the US and they dropped the ball.
  • edited May 2008
    ZnorXman wrote: »
    What's it called? Linkie please?

    Here you go:

    http://www.jmk1.freeserve.co.uk/minigame/minigame.htm

    It is a rather very good game. The graphics will look better
    when you actually play the game and see them animated...
    trust me :) Thumbs way up for James McKay on coding this
    one. Very addictive game. Man, I can't believe that was a
    year ago. Whatever happened to time going by very slowly
    like in childhood?
  • edited May 2008
    Sadako wrote: »
    Here you go:

    http://www.jmk1.freeserve.co.uk/minigame/minigame.htm

    It is a rather very good game. The graphics will look better
    when you actually play the game and see them animated...
    trust me :) Thumbs way up for James McKay on coding this
    one. Very addictive game. Man, I can't believe that was a
    year ago. Whatever happened to time going by very slowly
    like in childhood?

    Thanks for that, I'll give it a look-see this weekend :-)
Sign In or Register to comment.